Posts Tagged ‘Disease’

Health – A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Coaching – A method of directing, instructing and training a person or group of people, with the aim to achieve some goal or develop specific skills.

Health care or healthcare – The prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions.

You pick the sport

Unless you were born behind the iron curtain – you probably picked the sport that you most like to play, and that you have spent most of your spare time participating in. There could have been a number of reasons why you chose to start playing a sport, but guaranteed you would only continue to play the sport if you fell in love with it. Similarly, health coaching allows you to pick the game you want to play – weight loss, increased fitness, less allergies, digestive system that works better, greater flexibility, improved concentration, control over a habit or compulsion…

If you did live behind the iron curtain then they would have put you through a bunch of physiology tests and told you what sport you were going to play – based on their expert opinion. This is a bit like modern health care – if you have a health issue that you want help with you will consult an expert who will run a bunch of tests, tell you what they will do to fix it, and you will do as you are told. And it might not be the game you expected to play: You want to run up a flight of stairs, your doctor wants to reduce your blood cholesterol…

You have the aspirations

What is the highest high you want to attain in your sporting life? Under-16 grand final, or the Olympics; Getting to the shops without becoming breathless, or climbing to the peak of Mount Everest; To make daily living more comfortable, or to discover the limits of your human potential?

With health coaching you get the privilege of setting the height of the bar. With health care you will be given the goal – it is called a normal value – Blood pressure, heart rate, breathing capacity, blood cell count, liver function, cholesterol reading, aerobic capacity, sitting reach, Xray reading…

You turn up to training

Training was banned from the original Olympics – it was supposed to be a test of natural ability. Somewhere between then and now, we worked out that you could develop and maximise your innate potential by training and practising. And if you do the right quantity and quality of training – you can transform from a loser to a winner.

Health coaching says “now is the time to start training for a healthy future – to prevent injuries and to enhance your performance in the heat of the big game”. Health care says “get in there, just play, we’ll patch you up if you tear or break something, and then we’ll rehabilitate you back into the shape you were in immediately before the game”.

You do the work

The coach can’t do your training for you, your team mates can’t compensate for your lack of fitness. In health coaching, the coach designs and schedules your program, but at some point you have to follow the program to get the benefits and the rewards. In health care we hope that there is someone out there who can make us feel the way we would like to feel, “is there a pill that can make this go away?” “Can you put my back in for me?” “The doctor said that they will find the cure for this in a few years.” “I’m on the waiting list for some surgery to fix this problem once and for all!”

It’s all fun

Even the most professional athletes need to have fun to keep them in the game. When the joy has gone, the heart has left, and the motivation will quickly wane. With health coaching you get to participate, and you get to express your personality and you can factor in serious amounts of silliness. Health care is a serious business – you should be impressed by the years of training, the amount of technology, and the visible signs of wealth and authority. And please don’t laugh too loud – you might disturb the other patients!

Playing the game is as important as the results

When I was an athlete, I used to enjoy training as much as I did competing. And the moments of sheer joy and reward weren’t standing on some medal dais; they were the actual microseconds of absolute focus, coordination and motion that constituted each component of the performance itself.

Health coaching offers the opportunity to be in the now – and to discover the healing that comes from becoming more conscious and reconnected with your inner self. Health care will be satisfied when you achieve that negative test result, a normal reading, or the ablation of that pain or discomfort without the need for any form of awareness or awakening.

It’s up to you on game day

You’ve done the training, followed the advice, mastered the rules of the game and now you are faced with the ultimate challenge – will you respond or choke? Health coaching prepares you for the challenges of the real world, and assists you to develop the coping mechanisms, visualisations and affirmations that will equip you for the battles of life. Health care sits on the sidelines and waits for you to fail – it will be there to help you pick up the pieces and maybe come back to fight again another day.

You get the credit

What is the name of Tiger Woods’ coach? How about the guy who taught Michael Jordan how to dribble a basketball? Who gets paid more – the best player in the best team – or the fitness coach? In health coaching you are at the centre of attention – when you achieve your goals you will be the one that everyone notices – how good you look, how much stamina you have, how much energy you exude. In health care the good doctor gets the credit – he’s the one who cured your cancer, removed your pain, knew what to do to save your life, told you which pill would do the job.

You get the blame

Coaches might get sacked, but the players are the ones that bear the brunt of the blame. With health coaching you might dismiss the coach if you aren’t happy with the results, but at some point you have to take responsibility for the fact that it is your body, and you are in control – or should be. In health care you are absolved from your personal responsibility – “that doctor didn’t know what he was doing”, “that chiropractor couldn’t get my neck back in”, “the cure was worse than the disease”. This might sound attractive but it excludes you from the benefits of growth and true healing.

You get the medals

The coach doesn’t get to keep your medals, certificates, endorsements, awards – he just gets a photo of him standing next to you holding your rewards. In health coaching we love to stand alongside you and bathe in your glory. In health care there are no awards for the contestants – the practitioner gets the awards and certificates and the guest spot on Oprah Winfrey…

Who won?

Using a sporting metaphor might lead the reader to take on a competitive mindset: “So is health coaching better than health care?” “Should I choose which team I am going to follow and swear to never cross camps?” “If I see a health coach and still get sick does that mean if I’d been smarter and chosen health care – I wouldn’t have got sick – did I pick the wrong team?”

Now let’s take our competitive hats off – A coach who doesn’t want to work with a team of trainers and therapists in a cooperative effort, will have a short resume’. And health care that only responds to illness crises and lacks a bigger picture of prevention and wellbeing is a sick model.

The name “coach” allegedly originates from the multitasking skills associated with controlling the team of a horse-drawn stage-coach. The ability to get two, four or six horses all going in the same direction at the same time and at the same speed is one to be admired. Make sure that your health care relationships integrate a balanced and symbiotic mix of COACHING and CARE…

Within our chiropractic training and culture is a diverse range of physical indicators that we observe, measure and monitor to help us to diagnose our patients’ physical state: The history is used to narrow down our list of disorders or even diseases which may be causing the problem; Posture tells us how misaligned someone’s body and spine is; Radiographs show us how much decay and degeneration has developed; Range of motion tests measure how stiff they have become; SEMG assesses how tight muscles are; our palpation skills feel where there is contraction, restriction, fixation and misalignment.

And then we apply a physical therapy to try and intervene on the physical disorder that we have isolated.

It has almost become a cliché that there is a mind/body connection. But have we tended to minimise this relationship? Or have we even missed the point of this revelation? Are we persisting with the convenient separation and compartmentalisation of these two dimensions? We say, “oh yes the mind can affect the body, and the body can affect the mind” – but in saying this do we miss the paradigm of the mind/body relationship?

In other words the mind IS the body, and the body IS the mind.

When you are feeling certain emotions like anger, resentment, guilt, frustration – your physical body is different to how it is when you are feeling emotions like love, acceptance, peace, joy, reward. And if your physical body is different, then your thoughts, feelings and emotions are different. One doesn’t lead to the other – one is the other.

Let’s take another look at our list of “physical indicators” from another point of view, to see if we can see what they might really mean in terms of the mind/body:

The History is really someone’s story about the suffering they currently feel. And we are very good at asking questions about how the suffering feels: Where it hurts, how much it hurts, how big an area does the hurt cover, when does it feel a bit better and when does it feel a bit worse? But do we miss the most important question? What does the hurt mean – to them? Here’s another way of asking this question to help those who can’t make a connection – “if this hurt didn’t go away what would it mean you couldn’t do?”, or “if this hurt didn’t go away what aspect of your life do you think would be most affected?” Do you know that if something in your therapeutic relationship and encounter doesn’t allay or release this connection between their pain and suffering, that their mind/body will resist healing?

Postural Assessment: Why does anyone have bad posture? Because they don’t know they have it! Why would anyone carry their head too far forwards when that skull and its contents are as heavy as a bowling ball? Because they don’t recognise that it is where it is – they have poor somatic awareness. Here’s a thought – they will also have a proportionately poor psychic awareness. In other words they will actually have poor somatopsychic awareness. Check it out next time you examine someone with really bad posture: Ask them how they are feeling emotionally, ask them how aware they are of each of their internal bodily functions: More often than not the same disconnect will exist.

What about those protective buttresses that are being layered down inside their body – the ones you see growing around their skeleton on their Radiographs? Ask yourself this question: How strong, thick and solid are the protective mechanisms that this person has built around their emotions and memories? What will it take to chip away this person’s emotional fortress? The resistance, slowness of their recovery and the common poor prognosis could be reflective of their hardened interaction with the world in a more general sense.

And that stiffness that has built up in their Spinal Range of Movement, that you prescribe stretching exercises to reverse. Here is my observation: Range of motion is directly proportionate to range of emotion. My saying goes like this – “concrete body – concrete mind”. Observe how flexible these people are to suggested changes in their state of mind or lifestyle, and you may see a mirror image of their body’s flexibility.

What about that tension that you see on their SEMG? You may interpret it as physical tension: And you might ask; “maybe you are working too hard”, “maybe you did too much gardening on the weekend”, “maybe you aren’t sitting up straight”? How about this one – muscle tension is proportionate to neurological tone, which is dependent on emotional state. Maybe their body hasn’t been working overtime – maybe their mind has.

And all those things you “feel” while you are Palpating: Stiffness, resistance, swelling, and misalignment. Have you ever taken a moment to ask yourself while you have a direct connection with this person’s field of intelligence: “What am I feeling as I palpate this person?” You may be great at palpating, but, if you get good at feeling, then you will get even better at FEELING. You may even glean more insight into that person’s state of wellbeing in thirty seconds of palpation than sixty minutes of talk…

How does any of this help you to become a better healer, or a more profitable businessman? When you GET IT, that you are a body/mind and that your practice members are body/minds – Then you will experience greater quality and wholeness in your life, and your customers will receive greater quality and wholeness from you as a healer – and people pay for quality…

(ps. If you think that this is suggesting that you have to become more of a psychologist or counsellor to be a better chiropractor – then you have missed the point – this has nothing to do with analysing and identifying the past hurts and experiences and helping someone to cognitively overcome the related dysfunctional thoughts and feelings. What this is about is that there is a whole new dimension awaiting you when you become more conscious of the mind/body synergy – what you are doing right now therapeutically will offer a much deeper meaning for both you and your practice members. In other words I am not talking about a change in procedure – but a change in consciousness.)

The number and type of clients you see and draw to your practice are a SYMPTOM of your own attitude towards chiropractic!

1) If your attitude is that chiropractic is great for the relief of any number of aches and pains - then you will have a pain relief and crisis carepractice.

No matter how many visits you try to extract from your customers, they will tend to use you only for the relief of aches and pains - you may have a PVA of 20, but this will be 20 visits of crisis care. And because you will see primarily pain relief occurring, you will justify your attitude. In other words, you will either not initiate larger state of wellbeing and general health changes, or even if they are occurring you will be oblivious; because you won’t even ask the questions that might detect that something else is going on. And your patient’s won’t think to mention any other changes that are happening in their lives, because you are the “Back Doctor”, and the other stuff has nothing to do with you.

2) If your attitude is that chiropractic is good for fixing back problems, or straightening abnormal spinal angles - then you will have a corrective care practice.

You could have a huge practice, with people seeing you for a bunch of visits in a relatively short space of time. People will be convinced and even impressed by your level of professionalism, equipment and affluent appearance. But here’s the question: How many families are you seeing, how many of your clients have been seeing you for 5 and even 10 years, how dependent are you on the next bunch of new patients to refill the appointment book and balance sheet?

3) If your attitude is that regular chiropractic helps to prevent spinal problems from progressing to be serious, acute and painful - then you will have a maintenance practice.

How quickly do your patients get to four to six week intervals in their care? Often they get to monthly visits and you haven’t even reassessed them. A couple of times a week for a couple of weeks, then once a week for a couple more weeks, and then before you know what’s happened they are booked in, in 4-6 weeks. They may be out of pain, and they may have experienced some initial health improvements, but have YOU really made any signifiant physiological and functional changes to their global state of wellbeing? Will they live longer and better as a result of an adjustment every 30-60 days, while in between they undo all your good work?4) If your attitude is that chiropractic is an integral part of a person’s health program, having an effect on their nervous system and releasing the work of the body’s innate intelligence - then you will have a broad scope health and wellness practice.Their symptoms, state of disease, financial position are even totally irrelevant to your belief that a regular adjustment will do them good… It’s this simple - PEOPLE WHO GET ADJUSTED DO BETTER! And they usually feel and function better too. But you don’t take responsibility for your practice members’ state of health - You didn’t get them into the state they are currently in, and you can but assist them and even coach them towards a more optimal lifestyle… You understand that each adjustment is a positive healing step forwards, and you utilise all your clinical and technical skills to determine how many steps they take backwards in between adjustments to determine the optimal schedule for their care. And this attitude is contagious, because the type of new patient that appears at your door seems to intuitively understand this philosophy, and they seem to be surrounded by a family and peer group that wants to join them at your rooms on a regular basis.

The Internet has now become one of the primary ways that practice members and prospective customers find out answers.

Do you help to direct them to congruent health related resources?

65% of people report access to the internet. A total of 74% of those with access use the Internet to find health information for themselves or family members. Disease-specific information is most frequently sought, followed by medication information, and then information about nutrition and exercise. Did you know that as a health care professional you can significantly build your relationship and loyalty with your customers by referring them to useful and helpful web sites?

Here are some short cuts to assist you to point your patients in the right direction…

1) Collect your patients email addresses and offer them a periodical email update service: Send out a periodical group newsletter with links to interesting health articles that align with your philosophy and services. Nowadays you can even remind some patients about their appointments via email.

2) Get a web site: Not just an online business card - but one that has significant amounts of health related and even self-help information, which is regularly updated. There are chiropractic specific services that can help you with this.

3) Have a list of health sites that you regularly refer to yourself - link to these from your web-site, and try to set up reciprocal links from their site to yours.

There seems to be a mythology in chiropractic that the average person is unable to comprehend the nervous system - IF this is true it is because no-one has ever taken the time to teach them…

Masseurs and Physios are hardly going to teach ANY principles that explain the nervous systems’ role in health and disease. The pharmaceutical companies and AMA would probably prefer that the average person did not understand the CNS, except that they have drugs that can block all pain and unwanted emotions. Not many people are going to see a neurologist in their life - and those who do rarely come away with any insight into the normal functions of the CNS.

You’re a chiropractor - it is your calling to teach the world about the importance of a healthy and fully functional nerve system. No-one else will. The simplest way to do this is in bite-sized chunks…

1) Explain at the very beginning of your relationship with a new client that the nervous system controls and regulates ALL bodily functions, and therefore everything that you do to them is is all about improving their nervous system; and warn them that you will tend to explain everything to them in terms of the nervous system so that they can better understand their own body and how to look after it.

2) Convert your explanations of your exam procedures to neuro speak: eg. POSTURE - Posture is not a biomechanical phenomenon - it is a neurological phenomenon - it represents the body’s ability to perceive and position itself against gravity - its effectiveness in maintaining the sphenoid directly above the coccyx - this requires proprioception and fine-motor control. When you display a person’s postural distortions to them, forget the mechanical talk about the spine bending forwards and putting more strain on the discs. Instead explain to them that the reason their head has got into such a ridiculous position is because their brain doesn’t know where their head is; and the most likely reason for this is something (a subluxation) blocking the information getting from their neck joints and muscles to their brain.

When you explain spinal XRays spend as little time explaining the shape and position of the vertebrae; instead teach them how the changes on the XRays will be affecting their CNS: “See how your neck is leaning forward, and has become straight - this will be stretching your spinal cord like someone trying to wring out a wet towel”. Look at this extra backwards bend in your low back; look at the size of the holes between the vertebrae - this is where the nerves have to exit to control your body - what effect do you think this squishing will have on the nerve’s ability to transmit information?

3) Do an audit of each of your exam procedures and examine your explanations. Then re-write your description for that procedure in terms of the nervous system - you can do it - you’re a chiropractor. AND/OR Attend a TRT seminar and we will help to show you all the neurological indicators that you can use to assess, explain and educate your practice members.

4) Explain the outcomes of your adjustments in terms of the nervous system and then show them the changes that occur in their positive findings when they are adjusted. When you learn TRT you will be able do do this in a few short moments…